Defining Anti-Semitism Stephen Sedley

Shorn of philosophical and political refinements, anti-Semitism is hostility towards Jews as Jews. Where it manifests itself in discriminatory acts or inflammatory speech it is generally illegal, lying beyond the bounds of freedom of speech and of action.  By contrast, criticism (and equally defence) of Israel or of Zionism is not only generally lawful: it is affirmatively protected by law. Endeavours to conflate the two by characterising everything other than anodyne criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic are not new. What is new is the adoption by the UK government (and the Labour Party) of a definition of anti-Semitism which endorses the conflation.

In May 2016 the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body, adopted a ‘non-legally-binding working definition of anti-Semitism’: ‘Anti-Semitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed towards Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, towards Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.’ This account, which is largely derived from one formulated by the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia, fails the first test of any definition: it is indefinite. ‘A certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred’ invites a string of questions. Is anti-Semitism solely a matter of perception? What about discriminatory practices and policies? What about perceptions of Jews that are expressed otherwise than as hatred?

These gaps are unlikely to be accidental. Their effect, whether or not it is their purpose, is to permit perceptions of Jews which fall short of expressions of racial hostility to be stigmatised as anti-Semitic. Along with the classic tropes about a world Jewish conspiracy and Holocaust denial or dismissal, the IHRA’s numerous examples include these:

Manifestations might include the targeting of the state of Israel, conceived as a Jewish collectivity. However, criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as anti-Semitic.

Applying double standards by requiring of [the state of Israel] a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.

Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g. by claiming that the existence of a state of Israel is a racist endeavour.

The first and second of these examples assume that Israel, apart from being a Jewish state, is a country like any other and so open only to criticism resembling such criticism as can be made of other states, placing the historical, political, military and humanitarian uniqueness of Israel’s occupation and colonisation of Palestine beyond permissible criticism. The third example bristles with contentious assumptions about the racial identity of Jews, assumptions contested by many diaspora Jews but on which both Zionism and anti-Semitism fasten, and about Israel as the embodiment of a collective right of Jews to self-determination.

In October 2016 the Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs published a report entitled ‘Anti-Semitism in the UK’ in which it broadly accepted the IHRA’s ‘working definition’ but proposed that two qualifications be added in the interests of free speech:

It is not anti-Semitic to criticise the government of Israel, without additional evidence to suggest anti-Semitic intent.

It is not anti-Semitic to hold the Israeli government to the same standards as other liberal democracies, or to take a particular interest in the Israeli government’s policies or actions, without additional evidence to suggest anti-Semitic intent.

The government in its published response adopted the IHRA definition but brushed aside the select committee’s caveats, taking the exclusion of ‘criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country’ to be part of the IHRA definition and to be a sufficient safeguard of free speech.

A recent opinion obtained from Hugh Tomlinson QC, a prominent human rights lawyer, by a group of NGOs concerned with Palestine and Israel, concludes that the IHRA definition is unclear and confusing (it could be suggested, in fact, that it is calculatedly misleading), that the government’s adoption of it has no legal status, and that the overriding legal duty of public authorities is to preserve freedom of expression. He also argues that, even taken on its own terms, the definition does not require characterisations of Israel as an apartheid or colonialist state, or calls for boycott, disinvestment or sanctions, to be characterised as anti-Semitic.

Policy is not law. At most it is a guide to the application of legal powers where these include exercises of discretion or judgment. For central government the impact of the IHRA policy may well be imperceptible, but for local authorities and educational institutions, and for the police in a number of situations, the policy is capable of having a real impact. Its authors may be pleased about this, but policy is required to operate within the law.

One law of central relevance is section 43 of the 1986 Education Act, passed after campus heckling of Conservative ministers and speakers but of continuing application to tertiary institutions in England and Wales. It places a duty on such institutions to ‘take such steps as are reasonably practicable to ensure that freedom of speech within the law is secured for members, students and employees … and for visiting speakers’.

A second, and fundamental, law is the 1998 Human Rights Act, which makes it unlawful for a public authority to act incompatibly with rights that include the right of free expression under article 10 of the European Convention. The right is not absolute or unqualified: it can be abrogated or restricted where to do so is lawful, proportionate and necessary for (among other things) public safety, the prevention of disorder or the protection of the rights of others. These qualifications do not include a right not to be offended.

The European Court of Human Rights has not helped here. In a judgment handed down in 2016, it upheld the order of a Swiss court requiring an organisation which campaigned against anti-Semitism to withdraw its criticism of an academic commentator for writing ‘Quand Israël s’expose sur la scène internationale, c’est bien le judaïsme qui s’expose en même temps.’ It is disturbing that the court failed to protect a publication which contended that propositions like these ‘glissent carrément vers l’antisémitisme’ (‘are clearly edging towards anti-Semitism’). Why were both the article and the critique not equally protected by article 10? The upholding of the Swiss judgment is another in a long line of cases, starting in 1976 with the Little Red Schoolbook case against the UK, in which the Strasbourg court has tolerated intolerant decisions of national courts on freedom of expression by giving them the benefit of a ‘margin of appreciation’.

Although the abstentionist nature of Strasbourg jurisprudence does little to prevent official intervention aimed at muting criticism of Israel, it can be readily seen why it may be contrary to law in the UK to bar a speaker or an event because of anticipated criticism of Israel’s human rights record, or of its policies and practices of land annexation. If so, the bar cannot be validated by a policy, much less one as protean in character and as open-ended in shape as the IHRA definition.

In recent times a number of institutions, academic, religious and social, have stood up to pressure to abandon events critical of Israel. What are less easy to track are events which failed to take place because of such pressure, or for fear of it; but the IHRA definition offers encouragement to pro-Israel militants whose targets for abuse and disruption in London have recently included the leading American scholar and critic of Israel Richard Falk, and discouragement to university authorities which do not want to act as censors but worry that the IHRA definition requires them to do so.

When a replica of Israel’s separation wall was erected in the churchyard of St James, Piccadilly in 2013, the Spectator denounced it as an ‘anti-Israeli hate-festival’ – a description now capable of coming within the IHRA’s ‘working definition’ of anti-Semitism. In such ways the official adoption of the definition, while not a source of law, gives respectability and encouragement to forms of intolerance which are themselves contrary to law, and higher education institutions in particular need to be aware of this.

Zionism, anti-Semitism & Ken Livingstone

Liverpool Friends of Palestine

Early in April Ken Livingstone was suspended for a further 12 months by the Labour Party National Compliance Committee.

He was originally charged with anti-Semitism and ‘holocaust revision’, either of which would have been reason to expel him if true. Neither accusation would stand up in a court of law, so it was no surprise when the Compliance Committee settled on “conduct prejudicial and/or grossly detrimental to the Labour Party”, citing “deeply offensive” statements on Nazi Germany.

Zionist organisations keen to conceal the actual history of Nazi-Zionist collaboration, and anti- Corbyn Labour MPs, predictably condemned the decision not to expel Livingstone.

Unfortunately, to their shame, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell also attacked him, and with Len McCluskey’s support the case was referred back to Labour’s National Executive Committee. But upholding freedom of expression, and solidarity with Palestine, means defending the right to speak truthfully about history, even if it hurts.

Why all this uproar about one man, whose strong record of fighting racism for decades is unquestionable?

Historical accuracy

It is clear what Ken Livingstone did Not say. He did not say that Hitler was a Zionist, nor that Zionism is equivalent to Nazism nor that the German Zionists, a small minority of German Jews in 1933 when Hitler took power, were complicit in the Holocaust. He did say that Zionist organisations collaborated with the Nazi regime which promoted them in opposition to the vast majority of German Jews who regarded themselves first and foremost as German citizens, not Jews. They wished to integrate into German society. The aim of Zionist Jewish organisations, on the other hand, was to persuade Jews to emigrate to Palestine.

Collaboration

The Nazi regime aimed to make Germany a Jew-free country. New laws gradually excluded German Jews from cultural, social, political and economic life. Some were supported by the Zionist organisations, as contributing to their aim.

On September 17th 1935, the paper of the German Zionist Federation Welcomed the Nuremburg Laws which removed German citizenship from Jews and effectively made them stateless. These laws were opposed by the vast majority of German Jews.

The regime promoted emigration from Germany and saw Zionist organisations as part of the process. This conclusion is detailed by such eminent Zionist historians as Lucy Dawidowicz (War Against the Jews), David Cesarani (Final Solution and The Fate of the Jews 1933 – 1949 ) and Francis Nicosia.

“Throughout the 1930s … there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews and Jewish emigration from Germany to Palestine.”

From Zionism and Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany by Francis Nicosia, Professor of History and Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont.

The Transfer (Ha’avara) Agreement

The most notorious collaboration was the Ha’avara Agreement, originally proposed by a Jewish businessman in Palestine, and embraced by the Nazis as a means to puncture the world-wide campaign for a boycott of Hitler’s Germany.

Nazi coin minted to commemorate the Ha’avara Agreement

The Agreement was signed in August 1933 by the Zionist Federation of Germany, the Anglo-Palestine Bank, and the economic authorities of Nazi Germany.

The owner of a Tel Aviv citrus export firm, Sam Cohen, had proposed that Zionist emigres avoid tax on capital leaving Germany, by purchasing goods in Germany to be sold in Palestine. The German Consul in Jerusalem wrote “In this way it might be possible to wage a successful campaign against the Jewish boycott of Germany… It is important to break the boycott first and foremost in Palestine, and the effect will inevitably be felt on the main front, in the United States.” The Nazis first agreed for 1m Reichmarks to be shipped to Palestine as farm machinery. The Jewish National Fund then got Cohen to arrange for frozen JNF monies to be released for transfer. “The bait for the Nazis was that the cash was needed to buy land for the Jews whom Hitler would be pushing out. Cohen also assured that he would operate behind the scenes at a forthcoming Jewish conference in London to weaken or defeat any boycott resolution.” In early May 1933, Chaim Arlosoroff, the Political Secretary of the Jewish Agency, came to a preliminary understanding to extend Cohen’s arrangement. He returned to Tel Aviv and was assassinated because of his dealings with the Nazis. The Agreement was then signed, and caused an uproar when it emerged.

What’s behind the attack on Livingstone?

We reject the view that Ken Livingstone is anti- Semitic. His statements on collaboration of German Zionists with the Nazi regime are broadly accurate. He has a long history of supporting the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice, as does Jeremy Corbyn who has faced continuing opposition from Zionists within and without the Labour Party who want to silence the voices of Palestinians and their supporters. Corbyn’s victory on an anti-austerity, socialist platform also angered right-wing Labour members, MPs and the media. Research by the Media Reform Coalition concludes that “most newspapers [had been] systematically vilifying the leader of the biggest opposition party, assassinating his character, ridiculing his personality and delegitimising his ideas and politics.” After his election as leader this alliance of Zionists and neo- liberals intensified their opposition, but their coup attempts failed to remove Corbyn.

False accusations of anti-Semitism

False accusations of anti-Semitism were then deployed. The independent inquiry by Shami Chakrabarti, which found that “The Labour Party is not overrun by anti- Semitism or other forms of racism”, had no effect. The false accusations by supporters of Apartheid Israel continued, with some newspapers, in particular the ‘liberal’ Guardian acting as cheerleaders. In this context we defend Ken Livingstone and condemn Zionists and their supporters for personal abuse and blatant political misrepresentations. Ken Livingstone was vilified for this statement:

“When Hitler won his election in 1932, his policy then was that Jews should be moved to Israel. He was supporting Zionism before he went mad and ended up killing six million Jews.”

This statement is not anti-Semitic. Yes, it should have said 1933 and Palestine. But the Nazis, under Hitler’s absolute authority, did support the Zionist emigration policy and did explicitly favour German Zionist organisations. Criticism of Israel and of its founding ideology, Zionism, has been misrepresented as anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism is a form of racist bigotry directed at Jews because they are Jews. By contrast, anti-Zionism opposes the political ideology which underpins the Israeli state. More than 40% of British Jews do not identify as Zionist. These escalating allegations of anti-Semitism are a response to the growing success of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement in holding Israel to account for its crimes against the Palestinian people. Allegations of anti-Semitism have been used increasingly to discredit Israel’s critics. The intention is to suppress criticism of Israel and undermine freedom of speech for Palestinians and their supporters.

Outrageous

Accusing Ken Livingstone of “deeply offensive” statements which are historically correct is outrageous.

Discussing the actual history will offend some who see it as undermining the legitimacy of the Zionist project of creating a Jewish state based on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In another era the white leaders and supporters of Apartheid South Africa were ‘offended’ by criticism of apartheid.

The answer is simple. Stop supporting Apartheid Israel and the Zionist philosophy which underpins it.

 

Liverpool Friends of Palestine

www.liverpoolfriendsofpalestine.co.uk &  http://www.freespeechonisrael.org.uk

 

 

 

The Zionist Federation of Germany’s (ZVfD) Welcome for the Nuremburg Laws

The Article below was printed in German in the Zionist newspaper Juedische Rundschau, issue No. 75, on September 17, 1935, and its discovery by Tony Greenstein will prove that former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone is right.

After years of struggle the new Laws passed by the Reichstag at the Party Congress of Freedom…establish absolutely clear relations between the German Nation (Deutschtum) and Jewry. Unmistakably clear expression has been given to the fact that the German people has no objection to the Jew as long as he wishes to be a member of the Jewish people and acts accordingly, but that, on the other hand, he declines to look on the Jew as a fellow-member of the German Nation (Volksgenosse) and to accord him the same rights and duties as a German.

The International Zionist Congress has just been in session in Switzerland, a Congress which also put an end very plainly to any talk of Judaism being simply a religion. The speakers at the Zionist Congress stated that the Jews are a separate people and once again put on record the national claims of Jewry.

Germany has merely drawn the practical consequences from this and is meeting the demands of the International Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German Nation and Jewry. The new Laws give the Jewish minority in Germany their own cultural life, their own national life. In future they will be able to shape their own schools, their own theater, their own sports associations; in short, they can create their own future in all aspects of national life. On the other hand, it is evident that from now on and for the future there can be no interference in questions connected with the Government of the German people, that there can be no interference in the national affairs of the German Nation.

The German people is convinced that these Laws have performed a healing and useful deed, for Jewry in Germany itself, as for the Germans. Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself and is offering State protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations.

Juedische Rundschau, No. 75, September 17, 1935.

* Written by the editor, A.I. Berndt.

Source: Yad Vashem

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/german-news-agency-on-the-nuremberg-laws

Germany … is meeting the demands of the World Zionist Congress when it declares the Jews now living in Germany to be a national minority. Once the Jews have been stamped a national minority it is again possible to establish normal relations between the German nation and Jewry.

The new laws give the Jewish minority in Germany its own cultural life, its own national life. In future it will be able to shape its own schools, its own theater, and its own sports associations. In short, it can create its own future in all aspects of national life.

Germany has given the Jewish minority the opportunity to live for itself, and is offering state protection for this separate life of the Jewish minority: Jewry’s process of growth into a nation will thereby be encouraged and a contribution will be made to the establishment of more tolerable relations between the two nations” (Jüdische Rundschau, Sept. 17, 1935).

The above article was published in response to an accurate historical reference made by former MP & former Leader of The Greater London Council, & First elected Mayor of London who was accused by Labour Party right wing witch hunters, when he said that there was  Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis in the 1930s.

Tony Greenstein explains Livingstone’s Accusation of Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis

http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/ken-livingstone-faces-labours-star.html

Draft Letter by Jewish Socialists for publication in support of Livingstone.

(Feel free to copy & use if you want to save time composing a letter from scratch)

We are in Wonderland with Alice when Ken Livingstone is found innocent of antisemitism but still convicted of ‘causing offence to the Jewish Community’. 

Ken Livingstone stated that Hitler and the Nazi state supported the Zionist movement:  this is an historical fact. Francis Nicosia, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Vermont University wrote: ‘Throughout the 1930’s, as part of the regime’s determination to force Jews to leave Germany, there was almost unanimous support in German government and Nazi party circles for promoting Zionism among German Jews’. Sadly, recounting such facts is now deemed antisemitic.

Tom Watson says that by not expelling Livingstone the Party has failed ‘the Jewish community’  [Labour ‘failing Jewish community’ with Livingstone ruling, says Tom Watson Guardian April 5^th] As Jewish supporters and members of the Labour Party we reject Watson’s statement.  The many Jews who despair of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians are not failed. It is naïve, offensive even, to presume there is one Jewish community all of whose members are of one mind and sensibility 

Political debate will often confront deeply held beliefs and be found offensive to one or other party.  It is regrettable that senior Labour Party  members have forgotten the necessity of free expression for a functioning democracy. 

Many Labour Party members found the Iraq War offensive. We find it offensive that Israel is an Apartheid society, with differential rights of settlement and property ownership dependent on religious affiliation. We are offended that other members of our party are not offended by this.

We are saddened that Jeremy Corbyn has felt under such pressure to refer Livingstone’s case back to the National Executive, we expect better of him. Double jeopardy is offensive and against natural justice.

 In response to another comment Tony Greenstein wrote:

He [Hitler] was tactically extremely flexible.  He and his associates, Rosenberg in particular, were very astute and able to take advantage of existing situations.  As early as 1920 when a heckler called for human rights, Hitler responded ‘Let him [the Jew] look for his human rights where he belongs in his own state of Palestine.’  [2] 

So yes in 1924 Hitler did not believe Zionism was a genuine enterprise and when they came to office the Nazis were remarkably ignorant about the movement.  But the German Zionist Federation [ZVfD] were determined to win over the Hitler regime.  I really do suggest instead of pontificating on about nothing you actually read something like Edwin Black’s book on Havarah.  There you will see that Goering, panicked by the growing Boycott movement called in the leaders of the German Jewish community.  He didn’t invited the Zionists because they were so tiny.  However the ZVfD secured an invitation and then in contrast to the other reps, who disclaimed having any power to alter the course of events, Kurt Blumenfeld openly boasted that the Zionists could stop the Boycott movement.  In other words they were willing collaborators or quislings.

And although you quote ahistorically from the early 1920’s, in the 1937-9 period, when Ha’avarah was questioned within the Nazi state, it was Hitler personally who endorsed it.

I showed quite clearly in my previous post, which you ignored beacuse it doesn’t dovetail with your Owen Jones style retreat, that the Zionist movement broke the Boycott of Nazi Germany.  Hitler turned around and said to the world, ‘you see, the Gentiles boycott us and the Jews profit by that’.  The Zionists played into all of that and you don’t even have one word to say on it.

In a debatebetween Berl Locker of Poalei Zion and the Executive of the World Zionist Organisation and Baruch Vladeck, a Bundist and editor of the Yiddish daily Forward and Chairman of the Jewish Labor Committee, Vladeck described how ‘The whole organized labor movement and the progressive world are waging a fight against Hitler through the Boycott.  The Transfer Agreement scabs on that fight.’ Vladeck contended that ‘The main purpose of the Transfer is not to rescue the Jews from Germany but to strengthen various institutions in Palestine.’  Vladeck termed Palestine ‘the official scab agent against the boycott in the Near-East’ because ‘without the worldwide effort to topple the Third Reich, Hitler would have never agreed to the Transfer Agreement.’ [1]

It appears Brian that you appear to support Locker as opposed to the Bundist Vladeck historically.  An interesting choice.

It is a fact that the Nazis supported the Zionist movement.  Zionist historians greater than you – David Cesarani, Lucy Dawidowicz, Francis Nicosia, Ian Kershaw all attest to that fact.

You say that Livingstone doesn’t speak with sympathy or compassion.  So you think the people who attack him, Tom Watson, Jeremy Newmark and all the assorted Zionist garbage do?  Those who defend racism in Israel today to it out of sympathy with the victims of the holocaust?  The same people who turn a blind eye to the fact that Israel has stolen the reparations Germany made for the holocaust survivors whilst keeping the latter in poverty?  I suggest your sympathy is entirely misplaced.

tony

The Herald – Sunday Herald

Letter – In defence of Livingstone

I HAVE to confess being slightly puzzled about the Labour Party’s pursuit of Ken Livingstone regarding his comments that Hitler supported Zionism (“Red Ken hits out as he fights to stay in Labour”, The Herald, March 30). There is a considerable body of evidence to illustrate that the Nazi Party supported Zionism in the period up to 1937.

In his book on The Final Solution the eminent Holocaust expert Professor David Cesarani quotes from a 1934 Gestapo report as follows : “The efforts of the Gestapo are oriented to promoting Zionism as much as possible and lending support to its efforts to further emigration.” It concluded with satisfaction that the Zionists had gained the upper hand over German nationalist Jews opposed to Zionism so that “in place of a rushed and poorly prepared emigration in 1933 we now have well-regulated emigration whose sole destination is Palestine”.

The Gestapo under Heydrich established a Jewish department in 1935 headed by Edler von Mildenstein. Professor Cesarani states that “he believed that Jews were aliens in Germany but saw little point in just suppressing them. Instead they should be assisted to emigrate to their own homeland. To this end the agencies of the party and the state should work with the Zionist organisations rather than frustrate their operation”. Note the use of the word “homeland”. He further states that “since the conclusion of the Ha’avara agreement in 1933, the Nazis had favoured Zionism and assisted Jewish migration to Palestine”.

Whilst there is no hard evidence to validate Hitler’s formal support for Zionism, it is stretching credibility somewhat to believe that Hitler was unaware of this activity within the Jewish department of the party given his obsession with “the Jewish question”.

Only when the 1937 Peel Commission recommended a separate Jewish state did Nazi opposition to Zionism emerge in a report written by Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann himself had visited Palestine in October 1937 to see if there were ways of speeding up Jewish emigration, only to be thrown out by the British shortly after arriving in Haifa.

Realising that the British wanted out of Palestine, his fear was that an autonomous Jewish state – as opposed to a Jewish homeland within a Protectorate – would allow that state to draw international attention to anti-Jewish persecution within Germany. He therefore recommended a major policy shift as follows: “Nor should the Third Reich do anything to strengthen the Jewish community of Palestine or assist the achievement of statehood”. This would appear to support Ken Livingstone’s claim as to the situation pre-1937.

Robert Menzies,

The Holocaust: Could We Have Stopped Hitler?     by Edwin Black

In the enormous shadow of guilt that seized American Jewry after the Holocaust, the answer all too often has been, “We didn’t do enough.” We are quick to shoulder the onus of self-blame for having been timid citizens, afraid to stir the waters in uncertain prewar times. But this version of history is untrue. Immediately after Hitler’s rise to power, American Jews mounted a formidable economic war to topple the Nazi regime.

Just weeks after Hitler assumed power on January 30, 1933, a patchwork of competing Jewish forces, led by American Jewish Congress president Rabbi Stephen Wise, civil rights crusader Louis Untermeyer, and the combative Jewish War Veterans, initiated a highly effective boycott of German goods and services. Each advanced the boycott in its own way, but sought to build a united anti-Nazi coalition that could deliver an economic deathblow to the Nazi party, which had based its political ascent almost entirely on promises to rebuild the strapped German economy.

The boycotters were encouraged by the early successes of their loud, boisterous campaign, complete with nationwide protest meetings, picket signs, and open threats to destroy Germany’s economy if the Reich’s anti-Jewish actions persisted. Skilled organizing from unions, political groups, and commercial trade associations carried the boycott’s message to every facet of American society and abroad. Depression-wracked nations around the world quickly began to shift their buying habits from the entrenched German market to less expensive, alternative goods.

*         *         *

The anti-Hitler protest movement culminated in a gigantic rally at Madison Square Garden on March 27, 1933, organized by Rabbi Wise and the American Jewish Congress. More than 55,000 protesters crammed into the Garden and surrounding streets. Simultaneous rallies were held in 70 other metropolitan areas in the U.S. and in Europe. Radio hookups broadcast the New York event to hundreds of cities throughout the world.

The boycott unnerved the Nazis, who believed that Jews wielded supernatural international economic power. They knew that in the past Jews had used boycotts effectively against Russian Czar Nicholas II to combat his persecution of Jews, and automaker Henry Ford to halt his anti-Semitic campaign. Whether or not this new boycott actually possessed the punishing power to crush the Reich economy was irrelevant; what mattered was that Germany perceived the Jewish-led boycott as the greatest threat to its survival–and reacted accordingly.

Relentless in exploiting the Nazis’ vulnerability, Rabbi Wise and the other boycott leaders were determined to form one cohesive international movement under the banner “Starve Germany into submission this winter.” But Hitler succeeded in averting this scenario by exploiting divisions within world Jewry.

The Nazi counteroffensive was launched at a secret meeting in Berlin, just six months after the Nazis took power and at the height of the anti-German boycott.

*         *         *

On August 7, 1933, an official delegation of four German and Palestinian Zionists and one independent Palestinian Jewish businessman were ushered into a conference room at the Economics Ministry in Berlin. The Jewish negotiators were greeted courteously by Hans Hartenstein, director of the German Foreign Currency Control Office. They talked for some time about investment, emigration, and public opinion, but the underlying theme was the boycott. The Nazis wanted to know how far the Zionists were willing to go in subverting the boycott. The Zionists wanted to know how far the Reich was willing to go in allowing them to rescue German Jews.

Hartenstein was about to call the inconclusive meeting to a close when a messenger arrived with a telegram from German Consul Heinrich Wolff in Tel Aviv, who advised Hartenstein that concluding a deal with the Zionist delegation was the best way to break the crippling boycott. Hartenstein complied, and the Transfer Agreement was born.

*         *         *

Three days later, the Reich Economics Ministry issued the pact as Decree 54/33.

The Transfer Agreement permitted Jews to leave Germany and take some of their assets in the form of new German goods, which the Zionist movement would then sell in Palestine and eventually throughout much of the world. The German goods were purchased with frozen Jewish assets held in Germany. When the merchandise was sold, the sale proceeds were given to the emigrants, minus a commission for administration and a portion reserved for Zionist state-building projects, such as industrial infrastructure and land purchase.

Two Zionists transfer clearinghouses were established: one under the supervision of the German Zionist Federation in Berlin and the other under the authority of the Anglo-Palestine Trust Company in Tel Aviv. The Berlin-based office exchanged blocked Jewish cash for German wares.

The Tel Aviv office, called Haavara Trust and Transfer Office Ltd. (Haavara Ltd.), sold the swapped German merchandise on the open market, collected the proceeds, and matched them up to the German Jewish emigrants whose money had been used. Organized under the Palestinian commercial code, Haavara Ltd. was operated by conventional business managers. Its stock was wholly owned by the Anglo-Palestine Bank, the official Zionist financial institution that later changed its name to Bank Leumi.

The Transfer Agreement enabled both Germany and the Jewish community in Palestine to achieve key objectives. Transfer helped Germany defeat the boycott, create jobs at home, and convert Jewish assets into Reich economic recovery. It helped the Zionists overcome a major obstacle to continued Jewish immigration and expansion in Palestine. Under British regulations then in force in Palestine, Jews could not enter without a so-called Capitalist Certificate, proving they possessed the equivalent of $5,000. To be in possession of such a sum qualified the immigrant as a “capitalist” or investor. Transfer made capitalist immigration possible because destitute Germans received the required $5,000 (actually the immigrant’s own seized funds) once the assigned German goods were sold.

The Transfer Agreement also allowed “potential emigrants” to protect their assets in special blocked bank accounts, which could not be accessed without purchasing and reselling German goods. Between the active and potential emigration accounts, the Transfer apparatus, through official and unofficial transactions, generated an estimated 100 million Reichmarks. The more German goods Zionists sold, the more Jews could get out of Germany and into Palestine, and the more money would be available to build the Jewish State. The price of this commerce-linked exodus was the abandonment of the economic war against Nazi Germany.

*         *         *

The Transfer Agreement tore the Jewish world apart, turning leader against leader, threatening rebellion and even assassination.

In the painful choice between relief vs. rescue, most of the Jewish world opted for relief; that is, defending the right of Jews to remain where they were as free and equal citizens. But the Zionist leadership favored rescue, which was completely in keeping with their solution to anti-Semitism–a Jewish homeland in Palestine.

A half-century earlier, the Zionists visionary Theodor Herzl had foreseen that a “Jewish Company” would be created to manage the businesses and assets of Jews who immigrated to the future Jewish State. Their assets would be sold off at a substantial discount to cooperating “honest anti-Semites,” who would then step into the former occupations of the departing Jews.

Zionists saw Haavara as Herzl’s envisioned “Jewish Company” and Transfer as an opportunity to contract for a more secure Jewish future. Forty years of struggle to create a Jewish State had come to a sudden and spectacular turning point. The Zionist leadership’s awesome and difficult task was to enter into cold, anguished negotiations with Jew-haters, not in an atmosphere of emotion and frenzy, but with diplomacy and statecraft.

*         *         *

By the end of April 1933, total Reich exports were down 10 percent as a result of the boycott. But the economic war against Germany still lacked cohesiveness. Stephen Wise, who possessed the organization, the universal recognition, and the will to unify and direct an efficient campaign, knew that only a central group could target specific German industries and avoid duplication of effort. Wise also envisioned an enforcement apparatus insuring that any entity that traded with Germany would itself become a boycott target. This strategy set the Zionists and the boycott movement on a collision course. If the Zionists were to finalize a merchandise-based pact with Nazi Germany, then Jewish Palestine would be in violation of the boycott and its products and fundraising declared untouchable. Wise and other boycotters felt certain that this threat would derail any exploratory commercial talks between the Zionists and Hitler’s  regime.

In fact, secret preliminary and partial negotiations and even interim “transfer” agreements had begun in April 1933. When news of these early negotiations leaked out, the Zionists split along Revisionist and Mapai (Labor) lines. Transfer became a convenient battleground in an already tense atmosphere in which Zionist factions fought over economics, settlement policy, and other issues. The Transfer deal was widely seen by Revisionist leader Vladimir Jabotinsky as an unholy pact with the Nazis that would mainly benefit Labor-dominated Zionist institutions. Protest meetings, screaming headlines, public debates, and rancorous shouting matches broke out in Zionist circles throughout Europe and Palestine. David Ben-Gurion and other Laborites retaliated, calling Jabotinsky “the Jewish Hitler” and his black-shirted Revisionist followers “Fascists.” Revisionists became the most ardent anti-Nazi boycott organizers, attacking any Jew or Zionist who would do business with Hitler. It was all complicated by the fact that the Jewish Palestinian economy was inextricably linked to German commerce. Indeed, Germany was the number-one customer for Palestine’s number-one export product–oranges.

At the center of the maelstrom was Chaim Arlosoroff, a member of the Jewish Agency Executive Committee. This quiet academician and visionary designed the Transfer plan and supervised all negotiations with the Reich. So tense was the public hysteria over what Transfer was–and was not–that in May 1933 Arlosoroff granted a lengthy interview to a Zionist newspaper disclosing the entire plan, which only 24 hours earlier had been marked “Top Secret.”

*         *         *

On June 16, 1933, the Revisionist newspaper Hazit Haam published what many considered a death threat: “There will be no forgiveness for those who for greed have sold out the honor of their people to madmen and anti-Semites…. The Jewish people have always known how to size up betrayers…and it will know how to react to this crime.” That evening, Chaim Arlosoroff and his wife Sima took a Shabbat walk along the beach in north Tel Aviv at a point now occupied by the Tel Aviv Hilton. Two men dressed as Arabs approached the couple and asked for the time. Sima was worried, but Arlosoroff assured her, “Don’t worry, they are Jews.” A few moments later, the men returned, one with a Browning automatic. A bullet flashed into Arlosoroff’s chest, mortally wounding him. Two Revisionists were charged with the murder and sentenced to death, but they were released later on technical grounds.

The boycott question also divided the American Jewish community. Leaders of B’nai Brith and the American Jewish Committee, organizations largely comprised of German Jews who had for decades preached staunch Jewish defense, feared that the boycott would subject their brethren in Germany to retaliation. The Jewish War Veterans, who well remembered their German enemy from the Great War, were not swayed by such reservations. Though it lacked the resources of the larger Jewish organizations, the JWV pressed for a total commercial war against Germany. Joining them was feisty Louis Untermeyer, founder of his own anti-Nazi organization, the American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights.

In Germany, the besieged Jewish community opposed the boycott. They fervently appealed to friends and relatives in American Jewish organizations to halt any talk of protest or boycott, fearing the reprisals promised by Reich authorities and Nazi hooligans for any encouragement of anti-Nazi actions. As a result, B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee did their best to blunt the boycott’s impact.

*         *         *

The Eighteenth Zionist Congress opened on August 18 in Prague, only 11 days after the Transfer Agreement was sealed in Berlin. Advocates of the pact planned to outmaneuver, outtalk, outscheme, and outlast boycott proponents. The August 7 pact would be adopted, either overtly before the assembled delegates or covertly in closed-door rules committees. Either way, Transfer would go forward.

At the Congress, Wise fought the Transfer Agreement privately and publicly. He lost. After midnight motions and surprise votes, the Transfer Agreement was adopted on August 24 as official policy. Zionist discipline was imposed upon all boycotters, including Stephen Wise. Despite his allegiance to Zionism, Wise vowed to press ahead with his plan to form a unified global boycott within the framework of a so-called “Central Jewish Committee,” which was to be declared two weeks later in Geneva at the Second World Jewish Congress.

But as the days progressed, the plight of German Jewry became more and more desperate. Nazism’s stranglehold on Germany appeared all the more irreversible. European anti-Semites everywhere were following suit. Jewry seemed finished in Europe. A Jewish homeland in Palestine seemed the only answer.

*         *         *

September 8 now became the crucial date: the Central Jewish Committee would be established at the much-publicized Second World Jewish Congress in Geneva to deal the economic deathblow to Germany. In the end, however, Wise bowed to Zionist pressure and simply backed down. The boycott was abandoned.

A dejected Wise left for Paris. On the train, he met a 14-year-old German Jewish girl, a refugee, who had heard about the Geneva meeting. Wise asked her whether she thought the decisions there had helped or done damage. Looking at him, the young girl answered, “Es muss sein, es muss sein.” “What must be, must be.”

In the weeks that followed, Wise dodged reporters’ questions about the decision. Haunted by the girl’s remarks, Wise simply said, “What must be, must be.” Decisions had been made that only God could judge, only history could vindicate.

*         *         *

After war erupted on September 29, 1939, the dispossession of the Jews turned to annihilation. The Transfer Agreement served as a lifeline to the Jews who still could be saved. All debate about Haavara among Jewish groups ceased. The less said the better, lest the Nazis cancel the deal. Ultimately, the war did force an end to Transfer, but not before some 55,000 Jews were able to find a haven in Palestine.

Those who would condemn the Zionist decision to enter into a pact with Hitler have the luxury of hindsight. In 1933, the Zionists could not have foreseen the death trains, gas chambers, and crematoria. But they did understand that the end was now at hand for Jews in Europe. Nazism was unstoppable. The emphasis now became saving Jewish lives and establishing a Jewish State.

From the Zionist point of view, the boycott did succeed. Without it, there would never have been a Transfer Agreement, which contributed immeasurably to a strengthened Jewish community in Palestine and the creation of the State of Israel. And Transfer would never have happened had American Jews not mobilized as quickly as they did, only days after Hitler rose to power.

No one can say what combination of factors might or not might have stopped Hitler. What is clear, however, is that American Jewry did not react to the Nazi threat with indifference, cowardice, or indecisiveness. We were determined, courageous, and resourceful–but, ultimately, divided.

---

Sources:Reform Judaism Magazine, (August 1999).

Edwin Black is the author of the recently released novel Format C: (Dialog Press). This article is based on the newly updated The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact Between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine (Dialog Press). More information is available at www.featuregroup.com/transfer © 1999 Feature Group, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted here by permission.

United Nations; Economic & Social Commission for Western Asia

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People

and the Question of Apartheid:

Palestine and the Israeli Occupation,

Issue No. 1

E/ESCWA/ECRI/2017/1 Issued in: 2017

This report examines, based on key instruments of international law, whether Israel has established an apartheid regime that oppresses and dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Having established that the crime of apartheid has universal application, that the question of the status of the Palestinians as a people is settled in law, and that the crime of apartheid should be considered at the level of the State, the report sets out to demonstrate how Israel has imposed such a system on the Palestinians in order to maintain the domination of one racial group over others.

A history of war, annexation and expulsions, as well as a series of practices, has left the Palestinian people fragmented into four distinct population groups, three of them (citizens of Israel, residents of East Jerusalem and the populace under occupation in the West Bank and Gaza) living under direct Israeli rule and the remainder, refugees and involuntary exiles, living beyond. This fragmentation, coupled with the application of discrete bodies of law to those groups, lie at the heart of the apartheid regime. They serve to enfeeble opposition to it and to veil its very existence. This report concludes, on the basis of overwhelming evidence, that Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid, and urges swift action to oppose and end it.

Palestine and the Israeli Occupation,

Issue No. 1

Israeli Practices towards the Palestinian People

and the Question of Apartheid

Executive Summary

 

This report concludes that Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole. Aware of the seriousness of this allegation, the authors of the report conclude that available evidence establishes beyond a reasonable doubt that Israel is guilty of policies and practices that constitute the crime of apartheid as legally defined in instruments of international law. The analysis in this report rests on the same body

of international human rights law and principles that reject anti-Semitism and other racially discriminatory ideologies, including: the Charter of the United Nations (1945), the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (1965). The report relies for its definition of apartheid primarily on article II of the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973, hereinafter the Apartheid Convention):The term “the crime of apartheid”, which shall include similar policies and practices of racial segregation and discrimination as practiced in southern Africa, shall apply to…inhuman acts committed for the purpose of establishing and maintaining domination by one racial group of persons over any other racial group of persons and systematically oppressing them. Although the term “apartheid” was originally associated with the specific instance of South Africa, it now represents a species of crime against humanity under customary international law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, according to which: “The crime of apartheid” means inhumane acts… committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.

Against that background, this report reflects the expert consensus that the prohibition of apartheid is universally applicable and was not rendered moot by the collapse of apartheid in South Africa and South West Africa (Namibia).

The legal approach to the matter of apartheid adopted by this report should not be confused with usage of the term in popular discourse as an expression of opprobrium. Seeing apartheid as discrete acts and practices (such as the “apartheid wall”), a phenomenon generated by anonymous structural conditions like capitalism (“economic apartheid”), or private social behaviour on the part of certain racial groups towards others (social racism) may have its place in certain contexts. However, this report anchors its definition of apartheid in international law, which carries with it responsibilities for States, as specified in international instruments. The choice of evidence is guided by the Apartheid Convention, which sets forth that the crime of apartheid consists of discrete inhuman acts, but that such acts acquire the status of crimes against humanity only if they intentionally serve the core purpose of racial domination.

The Rome Statute specifies in its definition the presence of an “institutionalized regime” serving the “intention” of racial domination. Since “purpose” and “intention” lie at the core of both definitions, this report examines factors ostensibly separate from the Palestinian dimension — especially, the doctrine of Jewish statehood as expressed in law and the design of Israeli State institutions — to establish beyond doubt the presence of such a core purpose.  That the Israeli regime is designed for this core purpose was found to be evident in the body of laws, only some of which are discussed in the report for reasons of scope.

One prominent example is land policy. The Israeli Basic Law (Constitution) mandates that land held by the State of Israel, the Israeli Development Authority or the Jewish National Fund shall not be transferred in any manner, placing its management permanently under their authority. The State Property Law of 1951 provides for the reversion of property (including land) to the State in any area “in which the law of the State of Israel applies”. The Israel Lands Authority (ILA) manages State land, which accounts for 93 per cent of the land within the internationally recognized borders of Israel and is by law closed to use, development or ownership by non-Jews.

Those laws reflect the concept of “public purpose” as expressed in the Basic Law. Such laws may be changed by Knesset vote, but the Basic Law: Knesset prohibits any political party from challenging that public purpose. Effectively, Israeli law renders opposition to racial domination illegal.

Demographic engineering is another area of policy serving the purpose of maintaining Israel as a Jewish State. Most well known is Israeli law conferring on Jews worldwide the right to enter Israel and obtain Israeli citizenship regardless of their countries of origin and whether or not they can show links to Israel-Palestine, while withholding any comparable right from Palestinians, including those with documented ancestral homes in the country. The World Zionist Organization and Jewish Agency are vested with legal authority as agencies of the State of Israel to facilitate Jewish immigration and preferentially serve the interests of Jewish citizens in matters ranging from land use to public development planning and other matters deemed vital to Jewish statehood.

Some laws involving demographic engineering are expressed in coded language, such as those that allow Jewish councils to reject applications for residence from Palestinian citizens. Israeli law normally allows spouses of Israeli citizens to relocate to Israel but uniquely prohibits this option in the case of Palestinians from the occupied territory or beyond. On a far larger scale,it is a matter of Israeli policy to reject the return of any Palestinian refugees and exiles (totalling some six million people) to territory under Israeli control. Two additional attributes of a systematic regime of racial domination must be present to qualify the regime as an instance of apartheid. The first involves the identification of the oppressed persons as belonging to a specific “racial group”. This report accepts the definition of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination of “racial discrimination” as “any distinction, exclusion, restriction or preference based on race, colour, descent, or national or ethnic origin which has the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise, on an equal footing, of human rights and fundamental freedoms in the political, economic, social, cultural or any other field of public life”. On that basis, this report argues that in the geopolitical context of Palestine, Jews and Palestinians can be considered “racial groups”. Furthermore, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination is cited expressly in the Apartheid Convention.

The second attribute is the boundary and character of the group or groups involved.The status of the Palestinians as a people entitled to exercise the right of self-determination has been legally settled, most authoritatively by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its 2004 advisory opinion on Legal Consequences of the Construction of a Wall in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. On that basis, the report examines the treatment by Israel of the Palestinian people as a whole, considering the distinct circumstances of geographic and juridical fragmentation of the Palestinian people as a condition imposed by Israel. (Annex II addresses the issue of a proper identification of the “country” responsible for the denial of Palestinian rights under international law.) This report finds that the strategic fragmentation of the Palestinian people is the principal method by which Israel imposes an apartheid regime. It first examines how the history of war, partition, de jure and de facto annexation and prolonged occupation in Palestine has led to the Palestinian people being divided into different geographic regions administered by distinct sets of law. This fragmentation operates to stabilize the Israeli regime of racial domination over the Palestinians and to weaken the will and capacity of the Palestinian people to mount a unified and effective resistance.

Different methods are deployed depending on where Palestinians live. This is the core means by which Israel enforces apartheid and at the same time impedes international recognition of how the system works as a complementary whole to comprise an apartheid regime. Since 1967, Palestinians as a people have lived in what the report refers to as four “domains”, in which the fragments of the Palestinian population are ostensibly treated differently but share in common the racial oppression that results from the apartheid regime. Those domains are:

1. Civil law, with special restrictions, governing Palestinians who live as citizens of Israel;
2. Permanent residency law governing Palestinians living in the city of Jerusalem;
3. Military law governing Palestinians, including those in refugee camps, living since 1967 under conditions of belligerent occupation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip;
4. Policy to preclude the return of Palestinians, whether refugees or exiles, living outside territory under Israel’s control.

Domain 1 embraces about 1.7 million Palestinians who are citizens of Israel. For the first 20 years of the country’s existence, they lived under martial law and to this day are subjected to oppression on the basis of not being Jewish. That policy of domination manifests itself in inferior services, restrictive zoning laws and limited budget allocations made to Palestinian communities; in restrictions on jobs and professional opportunities; and in the mostly segregated landscape in which Jewish and Palestinian citizens of Israel live. Palestinian political parties can campaign for minor reforms and better budgets, but are legally prohibited by the Basic Law from challenging legislation maintaining the racial regime.

The policy is reinforced by the implications of the distinction made in Israel between “citizenship” (ezrahut) and “nationality” (le’um): all Israeli citizens enjoy the former, but only Jews enjoy the latter. “National” rights in Israeli law signify Jewish-national rights. The struggle of Palestinian citizens of Israel for equality and civil reforms under Israeli law is thus isolated by the regime from that of Palestinians elsewhere. Domain 2 covers the approximately 300,000 Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem, who experience discrimination in access to education, health care, employment, residency and building rights. They also suffer from expulsions and home demolitions, which serve the Israeli policy of “demographic balance” in favour of Jewish residents. East Jerusalem Palestinians are classified as permanent residents,

which places them in a separate category designed to prevent their demographic and, importantly, electoral weight being added to that of Palestinians citizens in Israel.

As permanent residents, they have no legal standing to challenge Israeli law. Moreover, openly identifying with Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory politically carries the risk of expulsion to the West Bank and loss of the right even to visit Jerusalem. Thus, the urban epicentre of Palestinian political life is caught inside a legal bubble that curtails its inhabitants’ capacity to oppose the apartheid regime lawfully.

Domain 3 is the system of military law imposed on approximately 6.6 million Palestinians who live in the occupied Palestinian territory, 4.7 million of them in the West Bank and 1.9 million in the Gaza Strip. The territory is administered in a manner that fully meets the definition of apartheid under the Apartheid Convention: except for the provision on genocide, every illustrative “inhuman act” listed in the Convention is routinely and systematically practiced by Israel in the West Bank.

Palestinians are governed by military law, while the approximately 350,000 Jewish settlers are governed by Israeli civil law. The racial character of this situation is further confirmed by the fact that all West Bank Jewish settlers enjoy the protections of Israeli civil law on the basis of being Jewish, whether they are Israeli citizens or not. This dual legal system, problematic in itself, is indicative of an apartheid regime

when coupled with the racially discriminatory management of land and development administered by Jewish-national institutions, which are charged with administering “State land” in the interest of the Jewish population. In support of the overall findings of this report, annex I sets out in more detail the policies and practices of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory that constitute violations of article II of the Apartheid Convention. Domain 4 refers to the millions of Palestinian refugees and involuntary exiles, most of whom live in neighbouring countries. They are prohibited from returning to their homes in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory. Israel defends its rejection of the Palestinians’ return in frankly racist language: it is alleged that Palestinians constitute a “demographic threat” and that their return would alter the demographic character of Israel to the point of eliminating it as a Jewish State.

 

The refusal of the right of return plays an essential role in the apartheid regime by ensuring that the Palestinian population in Mandate Palestine does not grow to a point that would threaten Israeli military control of the territory and/or provide the demographic leverage for Palestinian citizens of Israel to demand (and obtain) full democratic rights, thereby eliminating the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Although domain 4 is confined to policies denying Palestinians their right of repatriation under international law, it is treated in this report as integral to the system of oppression and domination of the Palestinian people as a whole, given its crucial role in demographic terms in maintaining the apartheid regime. This report finds that, taken together, the four domains constitute one comprehensive regime developed for the purpose of ensuring the enduring domination over non-Jews in all land exclusively under Israeli control in whatever category. To some degree, the differences in treatment accorded to Palestinians have been provisionally treated as valid by the United Nations, in the absence of an assessment of whether they constitute a form of apartheid. In the light of this report’s findings, this long-standing fragmented international approach may require review.

In the interests of fairness and completeness, the report examines several counter-arguments advanced by Israel and supporters of its policies denying the applicability of the Apartheid Convention to the case of Israel-Palestine. They include claims that: the determination of Israel to remain a Jewish State is consistent with practices of other States, such as France; Israel does not owe Palestinian non-citizens equal treatment with Jews precisely because they are not citizens; and Israeli treatment of the Palestinians reflects no “purpose” or “intent” to dominate, but rather is a temporary state of affairs imposed on Israel by the realities of ongoing conflict and security requirements. The report shows that none of those arguments stands up to examination. A further claim that Israel cannot be considered culpable for crimes of apartheid because Palestinian citizens of Israel have voting rights rests on two errors of legal interpretation: an overly literal comparison with South African apartheid policy and detachment of the question of voting rights from other laws, especially provisions of the Basic Law that prohibit political parties from challenging the Jewish, and hence racial, character of the State. The report concludes that the weight of the evidence supports beyond a reasonable doubt the proposition that Israel is guilty of imposing an apartheid regime on the Palestinian people, which amounts to the commission of a crime against humanity, the prohibition of which is considered jus cogens in international customary law.

The international community, especially the United Nations and its agencies, and Member States, have a legal obligation to act within the limits of their capabilities to prevent and punish instances of apartheid that are responsibly brought to their attention. More specifically, States have a collective duty: (a) not to recognize an apartheid regime as lawful; (b) not to aid or assist a State in maintaining an apartheid regime; and (c) to cooperate with the United Nations and other States in bringing apartheid regimes to an end. Civil society institutions and individuals also have a moral and political duty to use the instruments at their disposal to raise awareness of this ongoing criminal enterprise, and to exert pressure on Israel in order to persuade it to dismantle apartheid structures in compliance with international law.

The report ends with general and specific recommendations to the United Nations, national Governments, and civil society and private actors on actions they should take in view of the finding that Israel maintains a regime of apartheid in its exercise of control over the Palestinian people.

#IraeliApartheidWeek actions by Football Against Apartheid

Football Against Apartheid (FAA)  has kicked off its campaign with actions at three major events over the weekend of 25 & 26 Feb.    The campaigners against the  extreme form of racism known as “Apartheid”  kicked off the week at”The Bridge” as the Chelsea home stadium

is known.  Some of the action is captured here on a cloudy afternoon which failed to dampen the spirits of the fans.

Sunday was a a busier day for the anti-apartheid campaigners with an early start at Tottenham, where “spurs” are enjoying one of their better seasons for many years and were in the runners-up position in the top league in English football.

Fans of both Spurs and Stoke City were happy to express their views about the Football Against Apartheid campaign here on video.

In the afternoon Football Against Apartheid were off to Wembley where they received a

great reception from both Manchester United fans & Southampton Fans (The Saints)  and local residents alike who are so proud of their most multi-ethnic community in Britain with over 70 ethnic groups living together in absolute harmony.    The atmosphere was electric before the EFL Cup Final match, where there was no clear favourite other than the FAA campaigners, whose presence was welcomed by all.  Our video camera captured a few  words about #IsraeliApartheidWeek and the reasons behind their action.

Football Against Apartheid was on the march again on Tuesday Night 28 February 2017 This time addressing the Stand Up To Racism event in Haringey

This is the Video of the Stand up to Racism event

Brave Israeli Refusers Need Your Help, NOW

Support the young Israeli Jewish women who Refuse to Serve in Israel’s Occupation Forces & be part of the Criminal Majority

Please read this message from Tair Kaminer, who spent 159 days in jail for publicly refusing to enlist.

Tair went to prison about 6 times, for renewable periods of about 28 days, because she refused to serve in the Israeli Occupation Forces.

Imagine how difficult it must have been for her.  Not simply in spending over 5 months in prison, but in the ostracism and abuse she received from fellow Israelis who glory in the abuse and racism directed at Palestinians.

Taminer would have been considered a ‘traitor’ and worse by the chauvinists and bigots in the Israeli Jewish community and in the prison structure itself.  Yet despite this she and now two other Israeli Jewish women, who are also currently serving prison sentences have stuck to their principles.  Another Israeli Jew, Atalia Ben Aba will join them in February.

If you are thinking of a good cause to donate to in the New Year then there is no better cause to give to than supporting young Israeli Jews who refuse to be a part of the criminal  majority in Israel.  Please make a donation, however large or small.

Tony Greenstein

Greetings,

I’m writing this letter to say thank you.                DONATE NOW

At nineteen, I decided that I would rather sit in prison than serve in the Israeli army. You may know how the army and its soldiers are portrayed here in Israel. They are called heroes when in reality, their actions help prop up the occupation and oppression of Palestinians.

The public campaign my supporters initiated drew attention from around the world. The support I received from Refuser Solidarity Network in the U.S. meant that the media in Israel and internationally were reporting that a young Israeli woman was refusing to serve in an army that violates international law. The world knows now that Israelis would prefer to defy the government and military by sitting in prison than going along.

Your support meant so much to me and my family. Will you help us one more time in 2016 so we can continue to resist?

I sat in jail for close to six months. But then, the army gave in. They discharged me because the campaign on my behalf gave them negative public attention. Pressure works. Thanks to our work, the army and the government know there is resistance to their actions.

To keep the pressure up, we need your support. Will you donate as generously as you can before the end of 2016? 

Now, two other young women are beginning their third term in military prison. Tamar and Tamar have decided that a peaceful future is too important to risk the alternative by staying silent. Atalia Ben Aba will join them in February.

To keep the pressure up for Tamar, Tamar, and Atalya, all the refusers, and all those who resist endless occupation and oppression, we need you.

Please make a generous contribution to Refuser Solidarity Network today.

I can’t tell you how important the work of refusers is now, more than ever, in these bleak times.

In solidarity,

Tair Kaminer

 Copyright © 2016 Refuser Solidarity Network,Inc., All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:

Refuser Solidarity Network,

PO Box 75392

Washington, DC 20013

Read more about 2 of the Refusers

Aiden Katri

 

Tair Kaminer

 

Jewish & Irish workers spearheaded the Battle of Cable Street 80 years ago, to deliver a blow to British Fascism from which it never recovered.

 

The Mural of the Battle of Cable street 04 October 1936 when mainly Jewish & Irish workers stopped the Fascists in their tracks – No Passaran

Jewish & Irish members of Football Against Apartheid joined the 80^th anniversary The Battle of Cable Street which took place on Sunday 4 October 1936 in the East End of London.

                      

The Metropolitan Police, tried to protect the planned march by Sir Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and violently attacked the anti-fascist mainly Jewish rag trade workers ,Irish dock workers, and supported by trade unionists, communists, socialists, anarchists, Labour party members, and the men women and children of the neighbourhood

Over 300.000 anti-Fascist workers and residents stood their ground and stopped the Police from clearing them from the streets to make way for the Blackshirts lead by Sir Oswald Mosley.

The defeat of Fascism in Britain ensured that Britain would not later join the Fascist alliance quest for world hegemony, which might have been the case had the British Fascists not been defeated and humiliated at Cable Street.

Yesterday, Sunday 9 October thousands marched through the streets  of East London to the place where Fascists were the brutal Met Police using cavalry charges failed to make way for the fascists who were subsequently defeated 80 years ago, and never recovered.
Max Levitas, an Irish Jew and still a member of the Communist Party addressed the assembled campaigners

Jeremy Corbyn’s mother who was at the original event in 1936 was present to hear her son make another great speech that will win even more workers to his Labour party which has grown under his leadership to be the biggest political  party in Europe.

USA the main imperial power of our time is itching to take advantage of its hegemony to tighten its grip on the vast natural resources of our planet, much as the greed of the major imperial powers brought death and destruction to much of humanity 100 years ago, and imperial wars are looming again, as the crisis of capital forces massive multi-national corporations into desperate measures in pursuit of profits for greedy shareholders.   And as 100 years ago such wars present great opportunities for the workers of the world to confront its own ruling class and unite with the workers of all countries to create a world of peace and prosperity for all of humanity.

Maybe Jeremy Corbyn has created the spark in a world of darkness,  that will one day ignite the fuse to create such a world controlled by the creator of all things – the workers who make everything